Beowulf

We review a suitably epic failure.

For almost four hours last week, I became convinced there was no way to finish Beowulf. With 61 percent of the game under my belt, understanding the game mechanics wasn't an issue, yet everything came to a grinding halt when one particular objective -- protecting a wooden cross -- became impossible. I even e-mailed our reviews editor to say there was nothing more I could do. A late-night stroke of luck created safe passage to the next area, but luck is the only reason it happened.

Such experiences describe much of my frustrating journey through Beowulf, Ubisoft's adaptation of the upcoming CG flick from director Robert Zemeckis, which itself is based on the ancient poem of the same name. The aforementioned scenario wasn't the only time I came this close to tossing the controller against the wall trying to play through what's best referred to as a simplified take on God of War. Once, after I had spent nearly an hour repeating the same 10-minute battle to save a group of virgins from murderous trolls, the game presumably glitched and stopped spawning new enemies, giving me enough breathing room to take out the boss and press on.

And despite the seemingly positive comparison, God of War this is not -- though it tries desperately. Remember the awe-inspiring multiheaded serpent boss battle at the start of the original God of War? Ten minutes into Beowulf, players are tasked with taking down a monstrous multiheaded sea serpent with a series of timed button-press events that are straight out of -- you know. To Beowulf's credit, it's a licensed product likely under a tight deadline; if there was an action series to crib from, they chose the right one. Thing is, they don't even get that part right, with combo attacks never becoming more complicated than tapping X + X + X + Y. You get bored pretty quickly.

[Click the image above to check out all Beowulf screens.]

Whereas most action games are a one-man show, Beowulf makes players rely on soldiers called thanes. If every thane falls in battle, it's game over. But if a game's going to rely on A.I.-directed teammates as a game mechanic, it had better work right, at least most of the time. Here, the A.I. is reliably nonexistent. Thanes stand around aimlessly as their fellow soldiers are slaughtered, instead waiting for grumpy ol' Beowulf (you) to lumber over and save them from experiencing yet another game over screen. Worse still, you are often joined by Beowulf's friend Wiglaf (who looks exactly like every other thane), but if he dies, it's automatically game over. Cue screaming.

Beowulf manages to miss the mark on the simplest things. Something is seriously wrong when a player can run through nearly half of the game before accidentally realizing flag locations scattered throughout the environment are actually upgrade stations. The game never explains this in its 10-hour run. You might also want to avoid some of the game's most powerful weapons, such as hammers, as you'll become locked into the preset animation patterns. Enemies are given every chance to stab you to death, while you're stuck finishing an animation in the wrong direction. Not that it matters, as the weapon's bound to break in a few hits, anyway; you spend a good part of the game beating enemies with your fists simply because it's more convenient.

[Click the image above to check out all Beowulf screens.]

An interesting good versus evil "legacy" system is introduced early on that rewards players who don't abuse Beowulf's evil charge-up attacks, where he can decimate enemies in a few hits, but the wildly varying difficulty makes it nigh impossible to complete the game without liberal use of this tactic. Essentially, there's almost no way to be "good" if you want to have any fun, quickly negating one of the game's more unique features.

But the worst part? Beowulf features a minigame that rewards players for not having sex with Grendel's mother, played by a near-nude Angelina Jolie in the movie, for as long as humanly possible. That's just wrong.